Cardiff Model Toolkit: Community Guidance for Violence Prevention

More than half of violent crime in the United States is not reported to law enforcement, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. This statistic is a reminder that cities and communities do not have complete knowledge of where violence occurs, which limits the ability to develop successful solutions.

The Cardiff Violence Prevention Model provides a way for communities to gain a clearer picture about where violence occurs by combining and mapping both hospital and police data on violence.

Through a CDC Foundation grant funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Grady Memorial Hospital and the DeKalb County Police Department created a local Cardiff Model partnership in metropolitan Atlanta. This partnership also worked closely with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Division of Violence Prevention, which provided technical assistance and support for adapting the Cardiff Model to the United States and selecting public health approaches for violence prevention. The purpose of this pilot was to document the strengths, challenges and costs of the Cardiff Model program and determine technical needs to run the program. The prevention strategies implemented in the pilot have the potential to help guide future evaluation research and implementation of the model in the United States.

But more than just an approach to map and understand violence, the Cardiff Model also provides a straightforward framework for hospitals, law enforcement agencies, public health agencies, community groups and others interested in violence prevention to work together and develop collaborative violence prevention strategies.

We are pleased to announce that a new toolkit of educational materials designed to help communities interested in implementing the Cardiff Model is now available on CDC’s website.

"The Cardiff Model has proven successful at stemming violence overseas, and we’re excited to see it put into action in the U.S.," said Laura Leviton, PhD, senior adviser for evaluation at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. "We hope to see more hospitals team up with law enforcement agencies and other community partners to use the Cardiff Model as a way to keep neighborhoods safe across the country."

In addition to the toolkit, a video about the Cardiff Model is also available. This video provides an overview of the Cardiff Model and includes commentary from spokespeople involved in the Atlanta partnership, including Grady Memorial Hospital, the DeKalb County Police Department and CDC.

We are very grateful to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for their support of the Cardiff Model project, and we are excited for the potential of this project to encourage other communities to implement the model.